Outdoor Power Equipment (Lawn Mowers, Snow Blowers, Chain Saws and more) Discussions

Well last year had nothing but slipping problems with the drive and seeing B&S has not come out with a new cover so I solved it on my own. Last year I tried using just weather stripping but water would still get past  seeing the cover is pretty flimsy. I built the piece out of a piece of 3/4 inch  ABS plastic and epoxied it to the cover. It does add alot of strenght to the cover and keeps it from flexing. My next project is to add the new rubber gasket that goes between the frame and engine plate.

http://s1188.photobucket.com/albums/z414/btw574/

Well I have finished my mods to waterproof this thing to keep it from slipping. I added the new engine plate seal to my snowblower. This is a piece new to this years machines I was told. It took me all of about 1 hour to do.   For people who think water does not get under there they are wrong. There was some rust and paint lifting and salt traces under the engine plate. The new seal goes all the way to the front of the frame and I put a wider piece of weather stripping for the plate on the motor to seal to. The one from the factory was maybe 3/8" wide by 1/4" thick. I replace it with a piece of 3/4 wide by 3/16 thick. The nice thing about the new plate gasket is that when you put the belt cover on it goes under the cover and wraps down the side.

I posted new picture of the engine plate seal. I know this summer there will be some cleaning and painting to take care of some rust spot and paint peeling.                                                                               

You did a fine job with the cover.   My neighbour is having slipping clutch problems with his John Deere. I showed him the picture of your cover,  

Nice job on the belt cover.  Love the way it looks.  Sealing up the holes in the housing is probably where the real problem was.
Small amounts of water getting on the belt pulley's wouldn't be a problem very long.  The friction and heat from a slipping belt would dry it in a hurry.
But water with a little grease or oil residue on the friction disk is a different matter.  There are so many spinning parts in the drive train housing. 
That drops of water can get slung all over inside the housing.   And it has no way to dry out.  Don't know why they don't simply pop in plastic hole plugs.
It would be such a simple and cheap fix.

On my old  Murray built Craftsman, mentioned previously ,( sold it in 2009)  I had that clutch slipping problem,    started out slipping in !st gear and reverse only, because the clutch wheel is near the center of the disc.    For a while  it would still operate in  2-6  and high reverse. then all positions  would slip.   It was caused by the old Tecumseh blowing out oil. I had to keep cleaning the disc  and clutch with alcohol .  It would work fine for the next storm, then I had to do it again.  I thought it was just a problem with this long  used machine.   Talking to others who owned  some newer  John Deere , Simplicity machines, they  said that a slipping clutch was not unusual in their machines, but this was caused by   a poorly designed belt cover. letting in melted snow   . To improve their situation, some used  rubber tape ,pieces of rubber, sealant and some purchased a new improved seal that went between the belt cover and the engine.  "Whatever works ". A new Husqvarna with Hydro was my answer .

Nice work, BTW574.

Well we finally got some snow yesterday and put my mods to he test. I did my house and 3 neighbors and was outside for maybe 4 hours and did not have one time when the snowblower would stop moving. I even took hand fulls of snow and put it on the belt cover and around the engine. I even blew snow into the wind so it would blow back onto the snowblower. All in all the mods worked, now bring on a big snowstorm.